


I Would Do Anything for Love; Even That

by dragonnan



Category: Psych
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Trauma, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-21
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-12-03 04:42:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonnan/pseuds/dragonnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I chose you, that day. And... and I didn't even think about it. I had to make a choice and I chose you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Would Do Anything for Love; Even That

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mortma1984](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortma1984/gifts).



“It wasn't because you were pretty.”

 

Shawn smirked, tipping his head. “Okay, at first it was because you were pretty. But I've met a lot of pretty girls and they didn't make me want to stay...” Alright, that sounded terrible. “You are way prettier than any of those girls though, hands down. I mean your nose and your forehead and that little crevice you get when I say something stupid...” He shifted his leg. “Jules, let me see that crevice.”

 

He cleared his throat. “It wasn't just because you were pretty. And you know, you could look like Lassie and I'd still wanna make out with you cause you're the most amazing person on the planet...” He licked his lips. “I'm not saying I wanna make out with Lassie, though. I mean, he has those limpid eye pools but he looks like a biter...”

 

Actually, he just might give Lassie a giant wet smacker if the man turned up in the next fifteen minutes. Seconds. Seconds would be good.

 

“Just... talking to you. I've never met anybody I love talking to as much as I love talking to Gus until I met you. You were worth waiting for and... and I wish I hadn't been such a coward, you know? But it wasn't a waste. It wasn't a waste cause you were there the whole time. You were always there and I could always count on you and that mattered, Jules. That mattered a lot.”

 

Blue eyes stared up at him; glassy and unfocused. Shawn felt the lurch of cold roll up his throat and stick. He stiffened, staring back at the blue.

 

Blink.

 

He gasped out, feeling the flush of relief like pain prickles across his forehead. When he spoke again, his voice shivered.

 

“I'm sorry, Jules. That whole thing with Ewan and... your dad... and I swear I didn't know your nephew was _that_ allergic to peanuts. I mean, who knew the human face could swell up that much, cause I didn't know that, Jules. I sure didn't...” He trailed off – novel in many ways as he'd grown used to being cut off abruptly by any number of well meaning friends and family. To have an excess of babble at his disposal; it was distinctly unpalatable to realize he wasn't sure what to say.

 

Keep them talking, right? That's what they always said on TV. But what if he was the one doing all the chatter? But then, they said it was good to talk to people in a coma... though they never said why. He'd just always assumed it meant so they'd know they were in a dream, waiting to wake up. But what if it was a really good dream? Like, what if they were riding a giant ice cream bar shaped like a tortoise through a gumdrop forest filled with spider monkeys wearing tiny little business suits with tiny little business cards with the name J. P. Biggles on them? What if the dream was so good that the memory of being awake just didn't hold enough appeal by comparison? Was that why people died while in comas? Because their dreams had become better than life and they simply decided to... stay?

 

“Stay! Jules, you stay with me!” Because they always said that too. Make it a command – but then, Jules had never been one to bow to commands. She was the one to set rules and he was the one that broke all of them but hers. He would walk through a pit of rabid spiders for her. Barefoot.

 

“Please, just... just stay...” He was tired, though not in the way that was sleepy. This sort of tired hurt. Exhaustion ached through the limbs that held her weight. Juliet weighed almost nothing and God he loved to carry her – cart her off to bed with both of them giggling. Or, sometimes, the gentle bearing of her form in his arms when she'd fallen asleep at the table – file folders under her cheek. But this desperate cradle... Arms locked to keep from jarring her, the ache rose out of his bones in blistering stabs, knowing her held, not just her body, but her life.

 

“I chose you, that day. And... and I didn't even think about it. I had to make a choice and I chose you.” He couldn't look down at her face, now. Twenty minutes earlier, as he'd watched her falling – too far to save her – too far to stop it, he'd felt the burn of that long ago memory that stayed so crisp in his head.

 

_you can't save them both..._

 

He'd never spoken of that choice, afterwards. Not to Gus or his father, God no. Definitely not to Abigail. Not even to his mother, though she'd called him the day after it had happened. Even now he couldn't get beyond that admission. He couldn't wrap himself around what he felt. It was an agony of guilt and shame and relief and hurt and regret and anger, bitterness... That he _had_ chosen. That he would see Abby die instead of Juliet. That he would feel guilt because he had chosen Juliet. That both of them could have died regardless. And what did that make him? He was terrified to look deeper.

 

To explore the choice with other players.

 

That he would always choose Juliet...

 

“Lassie will be here soon. Probably show up with helicopters and a whole contingent of K9 teacup poodles... How many is a contingent anyway? Is that like, five? Ten? I think it's five. Five sounds good. I don't think Lassie could handle more than five. Unless, maybe he was carrying a few in a backpack...”

 

“Sh...awn?”

 

Juliet was blinking again, pulling together awareness with what seemed to be a massive degree of effort. Shawn wiped another rivulet of blood from her temple before it could get in her eyes.

 

“Did I mention this blouse looks really pretty on you?”

 

She strained through a giggle, her hand tightening in his and a tear trembling down her cheek.

 

Shawn brushed his sleeve across his lips. He'd called Lassie right after he'd made certain Juliet was still alive. Last time check placed that at almost half an hour ago. Long enough for Jules to go Pillsbury Doughboy white. Long enough for their uninvited party crasher to go from floppy and gasping to quiet and stiff. Shawn gulped and kept his eyes away from his handiwork. He'd made a choice again. This one hadn't even been difficult.

 

His hand hadn't stopped its movement through her hair. He loved touching her hair – smelling it. Especially now that he didn't have to be covert about it. Like when he used to lean over her shoulder pretending to be fully invested in the files on her computer screen. Now, he could indulge in the scent of her, much to Lassiter's disgust. Sure, she'd typically slap him away, but even that was rewarding in its own way.

 

“Jules – Juliet!” Her eyes opened again, but not completely. She was so tired but she couldn't sleep. He moved, just enough to get some circulation back in his right leg, and Juliet whined as her body was shifted. Shawn pulled the corner of his lip between his teeth and bit down hard.

 

They weren't even on a case!

 

It was a weekend. They'd loaded Juliet's Volkswagen with a couple of backpacks and a cooler of food and, after an emotional goodbye with Gus involving a completely justified hug, they'd headed for the mountains.

 

The cabin was beautiful. Two levels, all log, with a view that looked out over a valley filled with dark green trees broken up by juts of mountain stone. It was late in the year so some of the peaks had a frost of snow.

 

It was cold now. Neither of them had a jacket. How much more time? He checked his phone, anxious at the declining battery. They were taking too long. Why were they taking so long?

 

His eyes had a habit of zeroing in on every detail of his surroundings, especially if he was stressed. Panicked. Definitely panicked. Trees, rocks, broken glass, Jules, trees... But constantly, and something he continued to fight, was the urge to look at the mannequin six feet away and starting to collect a layer of glittery snow.

 

It was snowing.

 

He looked at the sky and tried to calculate the speed of the building cloud cover multiplied by the rate of snowfall divided by the lack of significant outerwear. Yeah, it was probably gonna suck in another half hour. Though how it could possibly increase in suckiness beyond the current level of suck was a higher math he'd need a blackboard to work out.

 

The ache in his leg was beyond unbearable again, so once more, Shawn shifted the smallest amount – just to take some of the pressure away. Juliet squinted and swallowed; still in pain but trying to hide it. Shawn brushed at her hair again and sniffed.

 

“We are going to get the biggest stack of pancakes known to man once we leave here. I heard about this gas station in Oxnard with a cafe' built into it that has the best, freaking pancakes! And there's like, fifty different flavors of syrup! Fifty flavors! I've been dreaming about the blueberry bacon banana stack for two weeks.”

 

“Creme' brulee and black ras-raspberry.”

 

Her voice was a shock, so weak and trembling, but still there. Still with him and still awake and still keeping up with the random path of his rambling that had rambled so far he wasn't sure he knew where he'd started. Shawn pulled her against his chest. He wanted to kiss her cheek but he couldn't bend that far without a terrible and rigid pain rushing up his spine.

 

She stiffened, suddenly and with a flinch through her shoulders, and Shawn felt the dread of guilt as he loosened his hold to stop hurting her with his panic.

 

“I'm sorry... I...” He was left to make another uncontrolled scan of the immediate fifteen feet of visible landscape that could be seen without twisting his neck. Trees, rocks, snow, mannequin, trees, Jules. “I'm sorry...”

 

Her eyes were closed but she was awake. Her fingers were moving across his wrist. They were cold. Everything was cold. He shivered so hard that the cold lumped in his throat like an egg.

 

But Lassie would be there soon.

 

So warm, earlier. The place they'd rented had a hot tub and a sauna. They'd had to flip a penny to decide which one to play with first. Shawn always had pennies on him and not just because of his uncle. Gus always gave him the pennies in his change because Gus was morally opposed to disposable currency. Or something like that. Shawn liked to glue pennies around the station in strategic spots so it worked out pretty awesome for both of them.

 

The sauna had won heads so they'd put on swimsuits and Shawn had been put on rock duty. He might have been a little zealous because they'd had to escape back into the room after ten minutes. But then they'd bypassed the pool for the bedroom...

 

They'd had hot dogs for dinner.

 

They'd slept by a super giant fireplace after staying up super crazy late playing Donkey Kong and at no point had Jules expected him to play nice with other random couples that were actually dirty, dirty robbers but still kinda cool anyhow; mostly because there weren't any other couples.

 

It was just the two of them.

 

It had been just the two of them.

 

And when the man had come to the door, Shawn had known his face from... somewhere. Trying to put it together while Jules had been polite. Too slow... Too slow remembering while the man spoke too fast. Too much... words. Shawn remembering as the words tumbled. Stream of conscious like Shawn on his best day – fabricating out of the oxygen... words. Words to hide behind... _Out driving with the family car had a flat just needed the phone awfully cold out no heat just for a second_... words like a cage, holding captives. Holding them long enough while he'd reached for a

 

“Gun!”

 

Echoing.

 

The word was still in his head. Bouncing like stones thrown down a tunnel.

 

Everything else in streaks after that. Bright colors... fingerpainted memory like a certain drug trip that still left him dizzied and sick when he'd fought to make it real. Only this was more... not slippery not... colors that bled and blended and tumbled in scattered sound and blur not... blurred enough. Clean. He remembered one scream

 

_his name_

 

One second when the choice was left or right and he'd chosen forward because there was always plan blue. Yeah, there'd been pain.

 

And then glass had shattered. There'd been a scream

 

_her name_

 

And a gun he couldn't remember grasping...

 

Red in the man's center, so close that the report had muffled against the thick wool of his overcoat. Red on the fingers that held the gun, pooling in his palm and making the grip slick. Warm. A river like heavy sludge rolling beneath his sleeve to his elbow – growing a patch there. Still alive he'd been still alive. Enough. To pull back and out and down, down, down with glass and blood and bones crunching under his knee – dull _snuck_ through meat and organs. Blood forced through lips from lungs collapsing. Breath so sharp and hard it cut a white knife up through the air. Crystals on lips and Shawn had lain across the escaping breaths. Frozen.

 

But Jules...

 

Cold on the ground, but not dead. Not dead, not dead, and all his strength not to crush her tight to his body. Holding her, so careful, while he'd watched the knife breaths weaken. Watched them fade. Watched them stop.

 

So cold.

 

She was watching him, now. How could she smile with that pain, how could she...

 

“I love you...”

 

And he heard...

 

Shawn smiled.

 

~*~

 

 

 

“His name was Martin Wain. Apparently Wain's mother had hired Spencer several years ago to investigate some sort of business fraud with her company. Turns out her son, a member of the board, had been working behind her back to secure power of attorney over her estate and have her declared mentally unstable. When it all came to light, mom cut the kid off and Junior got two years plus probation. Wain was released last week. Two nights ago, they pulled Mrs. Wain's body out of Mission Creek, right next to the beach. TOD was about six hours before the body was found. By then, Wain had already...”

 

Henry stopped the rest of it and, not really in the mood to keep discussing what reeked so strongly of personal failure, Carlton allowed it to trail off.

 

That they'd both come so close to such an unbearable loss. No... not just the both of them... Not with Guster sharing the room and leaking those giant cartoon tears along with a healthy quantity of snot.

 

Well it wasn't like Spencer would die; a broken leg was hardly life threatening even if it was his femur.

 

He wasn't the one who'd been shot this time.

 

O'Hara had taken a bullet to the chest – missing her heart by three centimeters. The fifteen foot fall after the shooter had shoved her though a window hadn't done her any favors either.

 

That Wain had taken a point blank shot to the exact same place was something Henry didn't need to hear about. Carlton had taken Shawn's statement. Whatever the young man did or didn't say, the file had stated self defense. There wouldn't be a need to look further than that.

 

That O'Hara would survive...

 

That was really all Carlton cared about.

 

Case closed.

 

 

 

~*~

 

 

 

 

Her hand was warm.

 

He held it, fingers moving in circles over her wrist. Both of them warm. His left leg was propped up and jutting like a plastered log away from his body, straight out from the wheelchair he'd be trapped in as long as he was in the hospital. Not long, really. Nowhere near as long as they'd be keeping Jules. It had been...

 

Close... now... Close enough to hold her hand and watch her face – her breaths stirring up through her chest and out between lips that were dry and starting to chap.

 

Nothing else, now, to watch. Nothing to pull his attention in a whirled circle. His thoughts no longer as fast though the randomness remained. Slower. Sluggish, actually. Great thing, drugs. The morphine made him giddy whether he wanted it or not. Only the first twelve hours, though. Piping directly into his blood – Three Stooges in liquid form. He'd had no choice in laughing. His dad, relieved, hadn't laughed back with him this time. He'd sat close. Sat close and let Shawn talk. Let all the mix of

 

_glass like diamonds and warm so warm never thought about did what I had to so warm it was hot smelled like metal falling down still feel the snap breaths like knives_

 

pouring out like steam from a screaming kettle. Wiping all the tears the drug forced laughter hadn't made.

 

On Vicodin, now. Rare... unheard of mercy, dad shelling out for pain killers beyond the cut off date. Hard to get insurance with his history – not that he'd tried. Not for long. For Jules he'd tried.

 

Jules... breathing easier now. They'd removed the throat tube yesterday – could breathe on her own with just a couple of tiny tubes in her nose. She'd be okay, though. She'd be okay and everything was okay.

 

He rubbed her hand and watched her breaths and didn't think about trees or rocks or cold or blood or glass or mannequins or red on his hands, his sleeve, his elbow glued inside his shirt and the rip of fibers pulling free...

 

He sniffed.

 

It was just supposed to be the two of them.

 

They hadn't even been on a case. No psychopathic serial killers. No games. No life or death...

 

He'd made a choice.

 

He'd make that same choice again.

 

For Juliet... there was never any other choice. For Juliet... he'd...

 

“Hey.” She'd started blinking and the moment he saw blue, the greeting seeped free. She'd said “I love you” before passing out, back at the cabin. He'd said “hey” when she woke up for the first time in the hospital. Nobody could do romance like a Spencer man.

 

Shawn couldn't lean forward with his busted up limb sticking out like a dead log but he could lean sideways, so lean sideways he did. Just close enough to reach her knuckles with his lips. She smiled, in a cute and soupy kinda way. He smiled back in an exhausted and lopsided kinda way.

 

“We didn't get to use the whirlpool.” Which wasn't what he'd meant to say at all. Not that he often planned that far ahead in anything he wanted to say. Well... not that he needed to, really.

 

Juliet made a sound like a choking puppy that he supposed was druggy chortle. “No... no we didn't.”

 

She blinked, one eye slower than the other, and her smile had the beaming quality of hard drugs.

 

Shawn rubbed her hand and thought about his choice. It hadn't been hard. He was afraid... though he wasn't sure why. He would always choose Juliet. If he lost her...

 

“I love you.” Which was what he'd meant to say, before that whole whirlpool thing. And while both were true, this one was so much more important. It was everything, actually.

 

Juliet was smiling, still, as she drifted off.

 

Shawn would stay with her until he saw her eyes again. He would stay with her until he was forced from the room and even then he'd sneak back until the hospital staff admitted defeat and gave them a shared room. Because he was never leaving her. He would

 

_fighting and blood so much blood wrestle the gun slipping the glass yelling her name JULIET! Falling her hair in the blood on his hands when it fired and he pushed and they fell and he died_

 

do everything for her.

 

It wouldn't even be hard.

 

 


End file.
